


Baa Baa Black Sheep

by moon_custafer



Category: Frankenstein & Related Fandoms, People Will Talk (1951)
Genre: Family, Gen, Why Did I Write This?, implied crossover - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-12 18:10:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15345588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moon_custafer/pseuds/moon_custafer
Summary: “Oh,” said Noah, perhaps just a touch too casually, “I’m not the first of the old family to go into the medical profession.”





	Baa Baa Black Sheep

“Noah,” Debra asked, while they were composing the birth announcement for the local paper, “how did your family come into the name _Praetorius?_ Is it something to do with the Praetorian Guard?”

“Oh,” said Noah, perhaps just a touch too casually, “I’m not the first of the old family to go into the medical profession. A couple of my ancestors had quite a little reputation in the Sciences, and as it was still the done thing in those days to publish in Latin—”

“They decided to take it a step further and Latinize their names? Like scholars in the Middle Ages?”

“Ludovicus and Carolus Praetorius. Ludovicus was my great-great-grandfather.”

“And Carolus?”

“My great-great-great-uncle. He was always considered the more eccentric of the Praetorius brothers.” Debra clapped her hand over her mouth.

“My husband-and-father-of-my-child,” she gasped, once she’d given up attempting to stifle her laughter, “is descended from the _less_ eccentric brother?!”

Noah laughed too, and Debra hugged him and did not ask any more questions about the nineteenth-century Doctors Praetorius.

He was somewhat relieved that she’d abandoned the subject. After all, he’d promised her, on his forty-second birthday, that he’d never again tell her a lie; and he knew she would easily draw the connection between his investigations into the tragic history of his ancestor, and his discovery of the latter’s scientific notes, and his own revival of Shunderson.

He couldn’t face explaining _that_ to her on his first day of fatherhood.


End file.
